Belle de Jour · reception & legacy
1967 · Luis Buñuel
How Belle de Jour has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A scandale and a smash in 1967 — it won the Golden Lion at Venice and became Buñuel's biggest commercial hit — then spent decades hard to see due to rights issues, until the 1995 Miramax re-release (championed by Martin Scorsese) re-canonised it for a new generation.
What's debated
Fans still argue over whether it's a liberating portrait of female desire or an elegant male fantasy about one — the 'whose fantasy is this, exactly?' debate never dies.
Its footprint
The buzzing box the mysterious client carries is one of cinema's great unanswered riddles — Buñuel refused to say what's inside — and Deneuve's Yves Saint Laurent wardrobe became a fashion touchstone; even the title got a second life when a 2000s call-girl blogger took 'Belle de Jour' as her pseudonym.
Where it stands
A fixture of the arthouse canon and Deneuve's most iconic role — the Buñuel that even people who've seen no other Buñuel have seen.